Dear Editor,
Whenever I read newspaper articles or letters to the editor accusing the late great Fidel Castro of being a dictator and of carrying out political executions, Shakespeare’s immortal words come to my mind: “Oh Judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason!”
The reality is that Fidel Castro entered electoral politics as a young 26-year-old candidate of Cuba’s Orthodox Party in that country’s general and presidential elections of 1952, only to have the Orthodox Party’s chances of an almost certain victory snatched away by one Fulgencio Batista staging a coup, cancelling the elections, and installing himself in power.
Batista, a former Army Sergeant, then proceeded to abolish the country’s constitution; dissolve all political parties; and impose a violent, terroristic, far-right, pro-American dictatorship on Cuba. Furthermore, Batista literally unleashed hundreds, if not thousands of assassins, torturers, and murderers on the resisting Cuban people.
In response to this situation, Fidel Castro and 164 of his young compatriots attempted to take control of one of Batista’s military fortresses, the Moncada Barracks. The attempt failed, and Batista’s ‘monsters’ tortured and ultimately murdered some 55 of these captured, defenceless young men.
Finally, after some six-and-a-half years of Batista’s murderous dictatorship, the masses of the Cuban people turned openly and decidedly against Batista, and threw their support behind Castro’s relatively small band of guerilla freedom-fighters, thereby causing Batista to flee the country on the 31st of December, 1958.
However, over the six-and-a-half years of Batista’s terroristic reign his henchmen had murdered close to 20,000 Cubans and tortured thousands more. And, not surprisingly, the masses of Cuban people demanded that justice be meted out to the assassins, torturers, and murderers who had not managed to flee Cuba. Indeed, the Cuban people were so incensed that there was a very real danger that they would take matters into their own hands and simply lynch these murderers in the streets of Cuba.
It is in these circumstances that the new Revolutionary Government decided to take charge of the situation and to establish Revolutionary Judicial Tribunals to put the Batista murderers and torturers on trial for their alleged crimes.
Thus, the persons who were ultimately executed were criminals (murderers and torturers) who had gone through a judicial process of trial and had been found guilty of heinous capital crimes. It is therefore very wrong to try to give the impression that Fidel Castro was guilty of summarily executing his political opponents. This is simply not true!
In fact, when in April 1961 the United States Government staged an unlawful military invasion of Cuba and were defeated at the Bay of Pigs, Castro took some 1,200 prisoners; kept them free from harm; and delivered them back to the US authorities in exchange for medicines and food!
Those of us who know the true history of Cuba therefore simply don’t recognize the Fidel Castro that the US Government, the Cuban-Americans in Miami, and the mainstream US media are trying to portray.
What we do know for a fact, however, is that the said United States Government made over 600 illegal, criminal attempts to murder Fidel Castro.
Yours faithfully,
David Comissiong
President
Clement Payne Movement